According to a Wall Street Journalreport tonight, "[t]he online-video service has been at odds with Verizon Communications Inc. and other broadband providers for months over how much Netflix streaming content they will carry without being paid additional fees. Now the long simmering conflict has heated up and is slowing Netflix, in particular, on Verizon's fiber-optic FiOS service, where Netflix says its average prime-time speeds dropped by 14 percent last month."

Further Reading

One possible interpretation of the above statement is that Verizon has been demanding direct payments from Netflix in exchange for carrying any video traffic beyond some numerical limit. That's probably not precisely what's happening, however, because the report says this particular dispute has been simmering for months—meaning it started before the court decision last month that overturned the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules. Prior to that court decision, it would not have been legal for Verizon to refuse to carry Netflix traffic when its payment demands weren't met.

However, there are other ways Verizon can play hardball and affect Netflix performance. Netflix has been pushing ISPs to host its caching equipment within their data centers and to peer directly with the video provider—that is, exchange traffic without a third-party intermediary.

"Netflix wants broadband companies to hook up to its new video-distribution network without paying them fees for carrying its traffic," the Journal noted. "But the biggest US providers—Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and AT&T Inc.—have resisted, insisting on compensation."

ISPs are under no obligation to accept Netflix's peering and caching offers. Teaming up with Netflix might improve performance for consumers, but not doing so isn't the same as refusing to carry traffic. If Verizon's network and its interconnections with third-party networks are strong, Netflix quality should be reasonably good.

The biggest problem is probably the same one we've seen in previous disputes: the connections between ISPs and the Internet bandwidth providers that Netflix pays to distribute its traffic to the rest of the Internet.

As we've reported before, those bandwidth providers, such as Cogent Communications, have traditionally exchanged traffic with consumer ISPs without money changing hands. But ISPs are using increases in Netflix traffic as justification to demand payment.

When negotiations stall, Verizon could put pressure on Cogent by delaying equipment upgrades needed to add capacity to links that have become congested. Cogent accused Verizon of doing just that last June, and it seems it may be happening again.

"People familiar with Cogent's and Netflix's thinking say the cable and telephone companies are delaying upgrading existing connections," the Journal reported. "Executives at major broadband providers, meanwhile, privately blame the traffic jam on Netflix's refusal to distribute its traffic more efficiently. ... Neither side is budging, people familiar with the matter said, leading to growing congestion."

The report noted that "Verizon has a policy of requiring payments from networks that dump more data into its pipes than they carry in return. 'When one party's getting all the benefit and the other's carrying all the cost, issues will arise,' said Craig Silliman, Verizon's head of public policy and government affairs."

Netflix traffic being sent from Cogent to consumer ISPs has reportedly increased in the months since Netflix started offering its so-called "Super HD" streams to all customers, rather than just customers of ISPs who have partnered with Netflix.

"Within the past four to six months, Netflix traffic through Cogent's connections to one major broadband provider has at least quadrupled, one person familiar with the matter said," the Journal reported.

Netflix declined to comment on financial disputes with Verizon.

Cogent told Ars that "this is a continuation of the same dispute" that we wrote about last June. A Verizon spokesperson called this latest news a "replay of the longstanding issue you guys covered a while back."

I can see both sides of this argument. The whole reason they're called "peering agreements" is because both sides are supposed to be peers, as in roughly equal. That means they're sending and receiving a roughly equal amount of traffic. That's obviously not the case here. On the flip side, ISPs need to make sure their customers are getting what they're paying for.

It's going to be tough for a while, and the only way I can see this getting resolved is Netflix paying up and passing the costs on to their subscribers. Net Neutrality doesn't enter the equation here.

No, no, no, no, no!

That argument had meaning only when the internet was young and business/academic based, not in the internet of the past ten years.

There _is_ balance. Verizon has ZERO content to offer to the rest of the internet, and the rest of the internet has everything that is desired by the Verizon customers. The balance is not one of byte-per-byte but one of supply-and-demand.

481 Reader Comments

A fiber network would have to be fairly extensive to be cost effective and I don't see that happening at anything but a state or federal level. Cities of any significant population would already have a contract with a cable company, so it is really competing with its own contractor if the city does it.

I don't understand what it means to 'have a contract with a cable company' in this context.

Cable companies will not come into a market without some type of deal with the city govt that enables them (the company) to have pretty much an exclusive market. So the city issues an exclusive deal to one cable company to wire the city--or there won't be any cable of any type by a private company. The only cities that can ignore such exclusivity requests are the ones large enough to make the cable companies willing to do the wiring themselves (without an exclusivity deal) because there are enough customers so a reasonable distribution will make their investments pay off for each of them.

As of 2013 Comcast has competition ... Dish Network for TV and Centurylink DSL for internet. Dish has decent TV service, but Centurylink's best is roughly equal to Comcast's bottom tier internet

Depends what you are defining as "competition". Tin-cans connected via string could be considered "competition" as well.

Dish could be considered a partial competitor--but satellite phone? Because that is how Dish works--via satellite broadcast.

Centurylink DSL--not really. The newer stuff competes, but much of Centurylink DSL is over old copper lines that have been installed for 50 years or more--and they do not want to replace it. So customers are left with relatively slow connections and no upgrade options via Centurylink. Why do you think the uptake for fiber optic telecomm was so great as soon as it was available? To get away from Centurylink AND Comcast in order to get decent speed at a reasonable price.

Telephone service today is primarily wireless. 3g is more than adequate for voice calls. The "wire to the house" is now used to deliver almost every anything but telephone calls. But, to offer non-telephone (i.e. web) services via wireless needs 3g/4g and much more in terms of speed. Note the same problem (but to a smaller extent) exists with services such as Garmin, Tom-Tom, etc.

As I understand it, putting Netflix's equipment inside Verizon's network would reduce the traffic coming into their network, because Netflix uses that equipment as a local cache for content. Popular content gets sent once to the cache, and then gets served up to Verizon's customers from there. The same amount of data gets served inside Verizon's network, but far less gets sent between Netflix/Cogent (I don't know if OpenConnect data goes via Cogent) and Verizon. Maybe I'm misunderstanding OpenConnect, and maybe that wouldn't reduce traffic enough to resolve the issue, but it's not like Netflix isn't contributing anything of value under that arrangement.

Yes, it would reduce traffic coming into their network because it would be hosted on their network. It is still providing Netflix with free access to their network, which I can not see any reason they should be given.

What's 'free' here? Currently, Verizon is incurring a certain amount of traffic, and they have a certain amount of rack space available. Under OpenConnect, they've have less space available, but would deal with less traffic. Where's the balance of costs? I don't know.

Verizon would be giving Netflix free access to their network. I'm not sure how it can be any more clear. They would have access directly to the network without paying.

Quote:

Quote:

Quote:

Anyway, that's the outline that makes me think that Verizon's eye isn't on customer service (i.e. the quality of xyz service for their subscribers) so much as revenue maximization (i.e. are we getting as much revenue for each portion of our operations as the market will bear). While I suspect it's an effective strategy for them, I find it objectionable.

I'm confused. Are you saying they should increase their costs and reduce their profit so Netflix can keep their costs static because it is better for Netflix customers?

I just don't see the problem with Cogent paying a fair cost for their access to other ISP networks.

'Netflix customers' are also Verizon customers; that's what I was getting at. That Verizon can straight-facedly talk about 'Netflix' data or 'Netflix customers' is precisely because they don't have to worry about whether or not someone's going to be a Verizon customer. AFAICT, most US markets are saturated, and churn is pretty much predictable. Folks who choose Verizon aren't, for the most part, going to have other acceptable options (alternatives will be too expensive, too slow, too much latency, caps, what-have-you).

At it's most basic level, this issue could be framed in two ways:

a) it's a customer-service issue for Verizon subscribers. Verizon should engage in a good-faith effort to resolve the customer-service problem; often these resolution require spending money on new equipment (e.g. adding peering ports, expanding, etc.), but sometimes they involve something less significant (e.g. accepting OpenConnect equipment and paying power/space).

b) it's a revenue source. Netflix is pushing this data onto us, so they should pay for it to be delivered, and Verizon shouldn't pay anything.

There's obviously room for compromise from either of these starting points, but the framing is important, because it sets expectations and indicates what might be significant WRT motives/incentives for resolving the issue. If it's a customer service issue, then getting Verizon customers back to their accustomed high-quality service is important, and perhaps worth conceding something for (e.g. giving up a bit of rack space, or accepting less for a peering contract than desired). If it's a revenue source, customer quality isn't a significant threat (after all, the customers won't leave Verizon, and if they dump Netflix, Verizon wins), but giving up revenue (not just value) is a significant downside.

So, no I'm not opposed to Cogent paying a fair price. I've got no idea what a fair price is, but presumably Verizon and Cogent could figure it out. I'm reading between the lines here, and maybe I'm reading too much into the situation, but I see a subtext that revolves around a captive subscriber base and the desire to monetize anything and everything possible regarding that base.

Correct, Verizon and Cogent should figure it out. Just like Cogent needs to figure it out with almost every other provider they work with. They are consistently the source of these problems because their business model is entirely dependent on using peering agreements in a non-even way, which is how they were intended. If you look at the situation purely from a Verizon enduser view it looks like Verizon is bad, if you look at the situation from an independent viewpoint where you examine each aspect of the agreements and how ISPs deal with it other it isn't the same.

A fiber network would have to be fairly extensive to be cost effective and I don't see that happening at anything but a state or federal level. Cities of any significant population would already have a contract with a cable company, so it is really competing with its own contractor if the city does it.

I don't understand what it means to 'have a contract with a cable company' in this context.

Cable companies will not come into a market without some type of deal with the city govt that enables them (the company) to have pretty much an exclusive market. So the city issues an exclusive deal to one cable company to wire the city--or there won't be any cable of any type by a private company. The only cities that can ignore such exclusivity requests are the ones large enough to make the cable companies willing to do the wiring themselves (without an exclusivity deal) because there are enough customers so a reasonable distribution will make their investments pay off for each of them.

I mistakenly replied to Fritzr, thinking it was you. I apologize for that. fgoodwin has already pointed out the fundamental error in your argument: exclusivity deals have been prohibited for over 20 years.

As I understand it, putting Netflix's equipment inside Verizon's network would reduce the traffic coming into their network, because Netflix uses that equipment as a local cache for content. Popular content gets sent once to the cache, and then gets served up to Verizon's customers from there. The same amount of data gets served inside Verizon's network, but far less gets sent between Netflix/Cogent (I don't know if OpenConnect data goes via Cogent) and Verizon. Maybe I'm misunderstanding OpenConnect, and maybe that wouldn't reduce traffic enough to resolve the issue, but it's not like Netflix isn't contributing anything of value under that arrangement.

Yes, it would reduce traffic coming into their network because it would be hosted on their network. It is still providing Netflix with free access to their network, which I can not see any reason they should be given.

What's 'free' here? Currently, Verizon is incurring a certain amount of traffic, and they have a certain amount of rack space available. Under OpenConnect, they've have less space available, but would deal with less traffic. Where's the balance of costs? I don't know.

Verizon would be giving Netflix free access to their network. I'm not sure how it can be any more clear. They would have access directly to the network without paying.

They would only have access without paying if they currently have access without paying, wouldn't they? The data going into that caching server isn't getting there by magic, after all. I understood the idea to be that the caching server would take the data from Cogent (so it's covered under Cogent's peering agreement), and because it's cached data, the reduction in data at the peering point would (partially) alleviate the congestion.

If this is a reasonable outline of the situation, all Verizon is doing 'for free' is providing space, power, and cooling (these might not be trivial costs; I don't know). What they're getting in exchange is the elimination of congestion at a peering point. I don't know how the value trade-off ends up (Verizon evidently doesn't care for the outcome), but I don't see how there's anything 'free' there that isn't already present.

Quote:

Correct, Verizon and Cogent should figure it out. Just like Cogent needs to figure it out with almost every other provider they work with. They are consistently the source of these problems because their business model is entirely dependent on using peering agreements in a non-even way, which is how they were intended. If you look at the situation purely from a Verizon enduser view it looks like Verizon is bad, if you look at the situation from an independent viewpoint where you examine each aspect of the agreements and how ISPs deal with it other it isn't the same.

AFAICT, I'm looking at this from an independent viewpoint, and I don't see any one framing that's obviously more legitimate than any other. I can certainly understand the legitimacy of Verizon saying 'fuck our subscriber's video quality, they're not going to drop FiOS to gamble on Netflix quality on some other (much lower-speed) service, but Netflix needs those people to be happy, and therefore will pay'. That's totally rational. I can understand Verizon saying (and perhaps even believing) 'hey Cogent, you're dumping a whole bunch of data on this peering point, and since it coming from you, you need to pay for it on an ongoing basis'. I can understand Cogent saying 'erm, your customers requested the data; it's not our fault your network can't support your customer's requests, perhaps you should get your systems sorted out.'

Without actually seeing the agreements in question, I don't see how I could possibly determine whether or not Cogent is abusing their agreement, and since that isn't going to happen, I guess I'm just going to stay irritated that this brinksmanship over balance sheets can take precedence over keeping one's customers satisfied. But then, my philosophy has always been one of focusing on high quality products, and high quality customer support, believing that if the customers are happy, they'll keep on spending money (generally, IME, they do; they also refer friends, which is nice ). Perhaps it's just the philosophical difference at work here.

A fiber network would have to be fairly extensive to be cost effective and I don't see that happening at anything but a state or federal level. Cities of any significant population would already have a contract with a cable company, so it is really competing with its own contractor if the city does it.

I don't understand what it means to 'have a contract with a cable company' in this context.

Cable companies will not come into a market without some type of deal with the city govt that enables them (the company) to have pretty much an exclusive market. So the city issues an exclusive deal to one cable company to wire the city--or there won't be any cable of any type by a private company. The only cities that can ignore such exclusivity requests are the ones large enough to make the cable companies willing to do the wiring themselves (without an exclusivity deal) because there are enough customers so a reasonable distribution will make their investments pay off for each of them.

I mistakenly replied to Fritzr, thinking it was you. I apologize for that. fgoodwin has already pointed out the fundamental error in your argument: exclusivity deals have been prohibited for over 20 years.

Legally that is true. But of course no law can make another cable company enter the market as an overbuilder and with very few exceptions (google fiber being a notable one) none have done so in over twenty years.

Correct, Verizon and Cogent should figure it out. Just like Verizon needs to figure it out with almost every other provider they work with. They are consistently the source of these problems because their business model is entirely dependent on using peering agreements in a non-even way, which is how they were intended.

FTFY. Cogent is an internet company doing internet business like hashing out peering and transit agreements just as it's always been done. Has it ever dawned on you to look at it from the other side, and recognize that it's Verizon and the other last-mile ISPs-turned-content-conglomerates who are breaking things like peering by being unreasonably asymmetrical with their bandwidth plans and their puny upload limits, and trying to "break the internet" by leveraging this captive audience in order to force both senders and receivers of data to pay in as many ways as possible for the same data?

As for Netflix offering to provide Verizon and other big ISPs with caching servers--again, if you look at it from the other side this is Netflix trying to provide a win-win solution for both parties, since Verizon wouldn't have to pay as much to upgrade its connectivity and equipment to handle increased requests by its customers for Cogent-originating data (which it would have to do under the traditional standards which internet companies have always used) while Netflix customers would get the same faster response from Netflix as if Verizon had. In that reading, Netflix is actually being downright generous (albeit for reasons of mutual benefit) to Verizon. It's Verizon's refusal to upgrade its connectivity with Cogent, in accordance with long-agreed-upon internet standards of business conduct, which is the only real problem here.

A fiber network would have to be fairly extensive to be cost effective and I don't see that happening at anything but a state or federal level. Cities of any significant population would already have a contract with a cable company, so it is really competing with its own contractor if the city does it.

I don't understand what it means to 'have a contract with a cable company' in this context.

Cable companies will not come into a market without some type of deal with the city govt that enables them (the company) to have pretty much an exclusive market. So the city issues an exclusive deal to one cable company to wire the city--or there won't be any cable of any type by a private company. The only cities that can ignore such exclusivity requests are the ones large enough to make the cable companies willing to do the wiring themselves (without an exclusivity deal) because there are enough customers so a reasonable distribution will make their investments pay off for each of them.

I mistakenly replied to Fritzr, thinking it was you. I apologize for that. fgoodwin has already pointed out the fundamental error in your argument: exclusivity deals have been prohibited for over 20 years.

Legally that is true. But of course no law can make another cable company enter the market as an overbuilder and with very few exceptions (google fiber being a notable one) none have done so in over twenty years.

Sure, and we've talked in the past about the very good reasons for why that's true. My reply to jerryab was in the context of his comment about a municipality who chooses to lay their own infrastructure 'competing with it's own contractor'. If a municipality chooses to lay their own infrastructure (open-access or not), they're not really competing with the local CATV franchisee in the sense that someone choosing to do the renovation of their home is competing with the general contractor that they've already hired. The business relationship between the municipality and the video franchisee is a different relationship.

It might be that I'm missing the point of jerryab's comment (for example, if jerryab were intending to comment about the economic inefficiencies of duplicating infrastructure), but I think my point does stand.

A fiber network would have to be fairly extensive to be cost effective and I don't see that happening at anything but a state or federal level. Cities of any significant population would already have a contract with a cable company, so it is really competing with its own contractor if the city does it.

I don't understand what it means to 'have a contract with a cable company' in this context.

Cable companies will not come into a market without some type of deal with the city govt that enables them (the company) to have pretty much an exclusive market. So the city issues an exclusive deal to one cable company to wire the city--or there won't be any cable of any type by a private company. The only cities that can ignore such exclusivity requests are the ones large enough to make the cable companies willing to do the wiring themselves (without an exclusivity deal) because there are enough customers so a reasonable distribution will make their investments pay off for each of them.

I mistakenly replied to Fritzr, thinking it was you. I apologize for that. fgoodwin has already pointed out the fundamental error in your argument: exclusivity deals have been prohibited for over 20 years.

Legally that is true. But of course no law can make another cable company enter the market as an overbuilder and with very few exceptions (google fiber being a notable one) none have done so in over twenty years.

Sure, and we've talked in the past about the very good reasons for why that's true. My reply to jerryab was in the context of his comment about a municipality who chooses to lay their own infrastructure 'competing with it's own contractor'. If a municipality chooses to lay their own infrastructure (open-access or not), they're not really competing with the local CATV franchisee in the sense that someone choosing to do the renovation of their home is competing with the general contractor that they've already hired. The business relationship between the municipality and the video franchisee is a different relationship.

It might be that I'm missing the point of jerryab's comment (for example, if jerryab were intending to comment about the economic inefficiencies of duplicating infrastructure), but I think my point does stand.

Agreed. There are very good reasons cable companies don't overbuild.

If the government would call cable companies common carriers and force them to resell bandwidth on a wholesale basis, we would have a choice of retail ISPs that we don't have today.

OTOH, does gov't anywhere in the world force cable companies to do this? I know telcos are forced to lease their infrastructure to competitors, but I don't know if the same holds true for cable companies.

As I understand it, putting Netflix's equipment inside Verizon's network would reduce the traffic coming into their network, because Netflix uses that equipment as a local cache for content. Popular content gets sent once to the cache, and then gets served up to Verizon's customers from there. The same amount of data gets served inside Verizon's network, but far less gets sent between Netflix/Cogent (I don't know if OpenConnect data goes via Cogent) and Verizon. Maybe I'm misunderstanding OpenConnect, and maybe that wouldn't reduce traffic enough to resolve the issue, but it's not like Netflix isn't contributing anything of value under that arrangement.

Yes, it would reduce traffic coming into their network because it would be hosted on their network. It is still providing Netflix with free access to their network, which I can not see any reason they should be given.

What's 'free' here? Currently, Verizon is incurring a certain amount of traffic, and they have a certain amount of rack space available. Under OpenConnect, they've have less space available, but would deal with less traffic. Where's the balance of costs? I don't know.

Verizon would be giving Netflix free access to their network. I'm not sure how it can be any more clear. They would have access directly to the network without paying.

They would only have access without paying if they currently have access without paying, wouldn't they? The data going into that caching server isn't getting there by magic, after all. I understood the idea to be that the caching server would take the data from Cogent (so it's covered under Cogent's peering agreement), and because it's cached data, the reduction in data at the peering point would (partially) alleviate the congestion.

If this is a reasonable outline of the situation, all Verizon is doing 'for free' is providing space, power, and cooling (these might not be trivial costs; I don't know). What they're getting in exchange is the elimination of congestion at a peering point. I don't know how the value trade-off ends up (Verizon evidently doesn't care for the outcome), but I don't see how there's anything 'free' there that isn't already present.

Quote:

Correct, Verizon and Cogent should figure it out. Just like Cogent needs to figure it out with almost every other provider they work with. They are consistently the source of these problems because their business model is entirely dependent on using peering agreements in a non-even way, which is how they were intended. If you look at the situation purely from a Verizon enduser view it looks like Verizon is bad, if you look at the situation from an independent viewpoint where you examine each aspect of the agreements and how ISPs deal with it other it isn't the same.

AFAICT, I'm looking at this from an independent viewpoint, and I don't see any one framing that's obviously more legitimate than any other. I can certainly understand the legitimacy of Verizon saying 'fuck our subscriber's video quality, they're not going to drop FiOS to gamble on Netflix quality on some other (much lower-speed) service, but Netflix needs those people to be happy, and therefore will pay'. That's totally rational. I can understand Verizon saying (and perhaps even believing) 'hey Cogent, you're dumping a whole bunch of data on this peering point, and since it coming from you, you need to pay for it on an ongoing basis'. I can understand Cogent saying 'erm, your customers requested the data; it's not our fault your network can't support your customer's requests, perhaps you should get your systems sorted out.'

Without actually seeing the agreements in question, I don't see how I could possibly determine whether or not Cogent is abusing their agreement, and since that isn't going to happen, I guess I'm just going to stay irritated that this brinksmanship over balance sheets can take precedence over keeping one's customers satisfied. But then, my philosophy has always been one of focusing on high quality products, and high quality customer support, believing that if the customers are happy, they'll keep on spending money (generally, IME, they do; they also refer friends, which is nice ). Perhaps it's just the philosophical difference at work here.

Verizon gets a few benefits from paying for housing the cache.* Reduced inbound traffic. This gives them either a lower bill from Cogent for net throughput or a little more leverage when it comes time to negotiate an unmetered, free to both sides peering arrangement.* Improved NetFlix experience for Verizon customers. As Verizon is pushing NF as a reason for using their service, this is a net plus for VZ's marketing team.

Yes, it is a net plus for NetFlix, but it is not critical to their business model. When customers complain about Verizon internet performance, NetFlix tells them that there is a problem with Verizon. Unsaid due to business politics is that the customer might want to shop around for a connection that is more friendly to NetFlix

This type of problem will only become serious for NF when Comcast has majority ownership of US broadband and starts to drop hints that regular payments from NF might help alleviate some of the problems NF customers are seeing. That won't be until the current agreement to maintain net neutrality expires though. In the meantime they can show the FCC what nice people they are and how well they play with the services competing with TW. They won't ever interfere with anyone who competes with TW after the merger, after all they are being so nice now while under an enforced ban

"By naming itself Internet referee, the Commission has also introduced a new strategic option into every commercial dispute in the Internet sector. Parties will have the ability to try to manipulate our procedures for their commercial gain, or as simple leverage to extract concessions in private deals. This is not conjecture. In the buildup to this Order, we have seen countless different disputes across the Internet sector be labeled as Net Neutrality issues. I fear actual engineering issues will be subsumed by commercial and political considerations."

Neither Netflix nor the users are to blame if data transmission happens to blow a hole in Verizon's little trick of overselling bandwidth, just like most other ISP do. This practice needs to dissapear.

You can't afford an Internet connection that isn't oversold in your home, and neither can 99.99% of consumers. Overselling isn't bad in and of itself, and this issue is actually unrelated.

As someone who pays for 50Mbps of down bandwidth, I expect to get 50Mbps of bandwidth from wherever the fuck I feel like it. It could be some place in Indonesia, I don't care. If they're feeding into the ISP's network--at any point the ISP has a connection--the ISP should forward it to me as fast as they can.

Back when I was in the ISP business, you're the type of customer I would very politely invite to switch to the services of our competitors.

Quote:

If they can't do 50Mbps, then why the fuck are they charging me for 50Mbps?

It's not everyone in the world's fault that you don't understand the technical nor economic details of modern internetworking.

For you to have as much bandwidth as you claim as a right, dozens of other customers would have to be paying for flat-rate connections that they barely use, just to offset your high level of consumption. Now, no service provider inherently wants to accurately log traffic volume and bill for it, and no customer wants a variable bill, so flat-rate unmetered (not unlimited, unmetered) is a sensible business convenience for all parties.

If I was currently in the MAN ("FTTH") business I'd want to give you a gigabit ethernet copper handoff for technical reasons. I'd prefer not to place any other consumption restrictions on your connection for technical and business reasons, which would mean you could potentially pass nearly gigabit aggregate volumes at some points. However, don't let that fool you into thinking you're receiving the same gigabit connection for which your provider or another business would need to pay mid five figures U.S., or more.

As I understand it, putting Netflix's equipment inside Verizon's network would reduce the traffic coming into their network, because Netflix uses that equipment as a local cache for content. Popular content gets sent once to the cache, and then gets served up to Verizon's customers from there. The same amount of data gets served inside Verizon's network, but far less gets sent between Netflix/Cogent (I don't know if OpenConnect data goes via Cogent) and Verizon. Maybe I'm misunderstanding OpenConnect, and maybe that wouldn't reduce traffic enough to resolve the issue, but it's not like Netflix isn't contributing anything of value under that arrangement.

Yes, it would reduce traffic coming into their network because it would be hosted on their network. It is still providing Netflix with free access to their network, which I can not see any reason they should be given.

What's 'free' here? Currently, Verizon is incurring a certain amount of traffic, and they have a certain amount of rack space available. Under OpenConnect, they've have less space available, but would deal with less traffic. Where's the balance of costs? I don't know.

Verizon would be giving Netflix free access to their network. I'm not sure how it can be any more clear. They would have access directly to the network without paying.

They would only have access without paying if they currently have access without paying, wouldn't they? The data going into that caching server isn't getting there by magic, after all. I understood the idea to be that the caching server would take the data from Cogent (so it's covered under Cogent's peering agreement), and because it's cached data, the reduction in data at the peering point would (partially) alleviate the congestion.

No. They currently play Cogent, who have the agreement with Verizon. If they hosted their equipment directly in Verizon's data center who would Verizon be getting money from? Caching the server would have less data from Cogent to Verizon, but there would still be data through Verizon's network.

Quote:

If this is a reasonable outline of the situation, all Verizon is doing 'for free' is providing space, power, and cooling (these might not be trivial costs; I don't know). What they're getting in exchange is the elimination of congestion at a peering point. I don't know how the value trade-off ends up (Verizon evidently doesn't care for the outcome), but I don't see how there's anything 'free' there that isn't already present.

Space, power, cooling, and data transfer. What they are getting in exchange is the elimination of congestion at peering points, which could also be alleviated if Cogent would agree to proper terms. I don't understand how you don't see Netflix having access and transferring data on their Verizon's network without Verizon getting money as free. That is the definition of free. Netflix would be getting a service without compensating Verizon.

Quote:

Quote:

Correct, Verizon and Cogent should figure it out. Just like Cogent needs to figure it out with almost every other provider they work with. They are consistently the source of these problems because their business model is entirely dependent on using peering agreements in a non-even way, which is how they were intended. If you look at the situation purely from a Verizon enduser view it looks like Verizon is bad, if you look at the situation from an independent viewpoint where you examine each aspect of the agreements and how ISPs deal with it other it isn't the same.

AFAICT, I'm looking at this from an independent viewpoint, and I don't see any one framing that's obviously more legitimate than any other. I can certainly understand the legitimacy of Verizon saying 'fuck our subscriber's video quality, they're not going to drop FiOS to gamble on Netflix quality on some other (much lower-speed) service, but Netflix needs those people to be happy, and therefore will pay'. That's totally rational. I can understand Verizon saying (and perhaps even believing) 'hey Cogent, you're dumping a whole bunch of data on this peering point, and since it coming from you, you need to pay for it on an ongoing basis'. I can understand Cogent saying 'erm, your customers requested the data; it's not our fault your network can't support your customer's requests, perhaps you should get your systems sorted out.'

Without actually seeing the agreements in question, I don't see how I could possibly determine whether or not Cogent is abusing their agreement, and since that isn't going to happen, I guess I'm just going to stay irritated that this brinksmanship over balance sheets can take precedence over keeping one's customers satisfied. But then, my philosophy has always been one of focusing on high quality products, and high quality customer support, believing that if the customers are happy, they'll keep on spending money (generally, IME, they do; they also refer friends, which is nice ). Perhaps it's just the philosophical difference at work here.

Verizon isn't saying "fuck" anything, they are saying, "If you want to use more connections to our network you should be doing it properly though the many other avenues available." It doesn't matter who requested the data, it matters who is transferring data, that is the basis for how the internet works.

If Cogent won't pay properly for access then those costs are all on Verizon, which means every one of their customers has to pay more money, even those who don't want what Cogent is selling. How is that better customer service than having the cost go back to Cogent, which then goes to Netflix, and then to the people who actually use Netflix?

Correct, Verizon and Cogent should figure it out. Just like Verizon needs to figure it out with almost every other provider they work with. They are consistently the source of these problems because their business model is entirely dependent on using peering agreements in a non-even way, which is how they were intended.

FTFY. Cogent is an internet company doing internet business like hashing out peering and transit agreements just as it's always been done. Has it ever dawned on you to look at it from the other side, and recognize that it's Verizon and the other last-mile ISPs-turned-content-conglomerates who are breaking things like peering by being unreasonably asymmetrical with their bandwidth plans and their puny upload limits, and trying to "break the internet" by leveraging this captive audience in order to force both senders and receivers of data to pay in as many ways as possible for the same data?

As for Netflix offering to provide Verizon and other big ISPs with caching servers--again, if you look at it from the other side this is Netflix trying to provide a win-win solution for both parties, since Verizon wouldn't have to pay as much to upgrade its connectivity and equipment to handle increased requests by its customers for Cogent-originating data (which it would have to do under the traditional standards which internet companies have always used) while Netflix customers would get the same faster response from Netflix as if Verizon had. In that reading, Netflix is actually being downright generous (albeit for reasons of mutual benefit) to Verizon. It's Verizon's refusal to upgrade its connectivity with Cogent, in accordance with long-agreed-upon internet standards of business conduct, which is the only real problem here.

If you read what you "fixed," you would have read that Cogent is the company who can't get along with anyone else. So the question, again, is who is at fault, the company who has issues with everyone else, or everyone else? Netflix isn't trying to provide a win-win, they are trying to get a situation where they can continue to use Cogent, who undercuts competition through these peering abuses, without any increases in their costs.

Netflix is being generous by refusing to use a provider who can handle their traffic and then wanting to host their equipment on a different network without compensating them in any way? Please.

Correct, Verizon and Cogent should figure it out. Just like Verizon needs to figure it out with almost every other provider they work with. They are consistently the source of these problems because their business model is entirely dependent on using peering agreements in a non-even way, which is how they were intended.

FTFY. Cogent is an internet company doing internet business like hashing out peering and transit agreements just as it's always been done. Has it ever dawned on you to look at it from the other side, and recognize that it's Verizon and the other last-mile ISPs-turned-content-conglomerates who are breaking things like peering by being unreasonably asymmetrical with their bandwidth plans and their puny upload limits, and trying to "break the internet" by leveraging this captive audience in order to force both senders and receivers of data to pay in as many ways as possible for the same data?

As for Netflix offering to provide Verizon and other big ISPs with caching servers--again, if you look at it from the other side this is Netflix trying to provide a win-win solution for both parties, since Verizon wouldn't have to pay as much to upgrade its connectivity and equipment to handle increased requests by its customers for Cogent-originating data (which it would have to do under the traditional standards which internet companies have always used) while Netflix customers would get the same faster response from Netflix as if Verizon had. In that reading, Netflix is actually being downright generous (albeit for reasons of mutual benefit) to Verizon. It's Verizon's refusal to upgrade its connectivity with Cogent, in accordance with long-agreed-upon internet standards of business conduct, which is the only real problem here.

If you read what you "fixed," you would have read that Cogent is the company who can't get along with anyone else. So the question, again, is who is at fault, the company who has issues with everyone else, or everyone else? Netflix isn't trying to provide a win-win, they are trying to get a situation where they can continue to use Cogent, who undercuts competition through these peering abuses, without any increases in their costs.

Netflix is being generous by refusing to use a provider who can handle their traffic and then wanting to host their equipment on a different network without compensating them in any way? Please.

Nifty contradiction, so let them do it your way. Netflix is in business to make a profit--as is Verizon. Netflix requires Verizon to provide a pipe appropriate to meet Verizon's customers' needs connected directly to Verizon's network. Netflix pays for that volume--up to the pipe limit AND Verizon has to unconditionally guarantee their customers will buy the full capacity of that pipe. Now the shoe is on Verizon's foot. They will not do it. Why should Netflix pay for excess capacity they will not use? The problem is with Verizon because they refuse to commit to their customers' needs.

Correct, Verizon and Cogent should figure it out. Just like Verizon needs to figure it out with almost every other provider they work with. They are consistently the source of these problems because their business model is entirely dependent on using peering agreements in a non-even way, which is how they were intended.

FTFY. Cogent is an internet company doing internet business like hashing out peering and transit agreements just as it's always been done. Has it ever dawned on you to look at it from the other side, and recognize that it's Verizon and the other last-mile ISPs-turned-content-conglomerates who are breaking things like peering by being unreasonably asymmetrical with their bandwidth plans and their puny upload limits, and trying to "break the internet" by leveraging this captive audience in order to force both senders and receivers of data to pay in as many ways as possible for the same data?

As for Netflix offering to provide Verizon and other big ISPs with caching servers--again, if you look at it from the other side this is Netflix trying to provide a win-win solution for both parties, since Verizon wouldn't have to pay as much to upgrade its connectivity and equipment to handle increased requests by its customers for Cogent-originating data (which it would have to do under the traditional standards which internet companies have always used) while Netflix customers would get the same faster response from Netflix as if Verizon had. In that reading, Netflix is actually being downright generous (albeit for reasons of mutual benefit) to Verizon. It's Verizon's refusal to upgrade its connectivity with Cogent, in accordance with long-agreed-upon internet standards of business conduct, which is the only real problem here.

If you read what you "fixed," you would have read that Cogent is the company who can't get along with anyone else. So the question, again, is who is at fault, the company who has issues with everyone else, or everyone else? Netflix isn't trying to provide a win-win, they are trying to get a situation where they can continue to use Cogent, who undercuts competition through these peering abuses, without any increases in their costs.

Netflix is being generous by refusing to use a provider who can handle their traffic and then wanting to host their equipment on a different network without compensating them in any way? Please.

Nifty contradiction, so let them do it your way. Netflix is in business to make a profit--as is Verizon. Netflix requires Verizon to provide a pipe appropriate to meet Verizon's customers' needs connected directly to Verizon's network. Netflix pays for that volume--up to the pipe limit AND Verizon has to unconditionally guarantee their customers will buy the full capacity of that pipe. Now the shoe is on Verizon's foot. They will not do it. Why should Netflix pay for excess capacity they will not use? The problem is with Verizon because they refuse to commit to their customers' needs.

Uhm no. NetFlix will provide the hardware and installation. Verizon may or may not be required to pay the power bill...the contract (which is unlikely to be made public) can easily assign maintenance costs to NetFlix. That will be part of the negotiation.

Also Verizon is obligated to provide a minimum of 0 customers. That said NetFlix is offering this cache because they are seeing a very large number of requests from Verizon end nodes.

NetFlix & Verizon both are now paying for excess capacity they do not need IF the cache server is installed. One copy transferred & 5000 views from cache is likely for a popular title ... notice that was 1 copy transferred and everyone on Verizon's network who wanted to see it at any time after the transfer does not request it from the remote NetFlix server. They get it from the local cache instead.

For Verizon, 5000 streaming views is either 1 download from their peering partner or 5000 downloads from their peering partner. I will let you guess which will cost Verizon the greater amount of $cash.

As I understand it, putting Netflix's equipment inside Verizon's network would reduce the traffic coming into their network, because Netflix uses that equipment as a local cache for content. Popular content gets sent once to the cache, and then gets served up to Verizon's customers from there. The same amount of data gets served inside Verizon's network, but far less gets sent between Netflix/Cogent (I don't know if OpenConnect data goes via Cogent) and Verizon. Maybe I'm misunderstanding OpenConnect, and maybe that wouldn't reduce traffic enough to resolve the issue, but it's not like Netflix isn't contributing anything of value under that arrangement.

Yes, it would reduce traffic coming into their network because it would be hosted on their network. It is still providing Netflix with free access to their network, which I can not see any reason they should be given.

What's 'free' here? Currently, Verizon is incurring a certain amount of traffic, and they have a certain amount of rack space available. Under OpenConnect, they've have less space available, but would deal with less traffic. Where's the balance of costs? I don't know.

Verizon would be giving Netflix free access to their network. I'm not sure how it can be any more clear. They would have access directly to the network without paying.

They would only have access without paying if they currently have access without paying, wouldn't they? The data going into that caching server isn't getting there by magic, after all. I understood the idea to be that the caching server would take the data from Cogent (so it's covered under Cogent's peering agreement), and because it's cached data, the reduction in data at the peering point would (partially) alleviate the congestion.

No. They currently play Cogent, who have the agreement with Verizon. If they hosted their equipment directly in Verizon's data center who would Verizon be getting money from? Caching the server would have less data from Cogent to Verizon, but there would still be data through Verizon's network.

And this is what I meant by you making the argument that "they should pay for the amount of data delivered to end-users, and not the amount going over peering points". I do not believe for one second that ISP's do not have any generic caches of any kind so by your argument then they shouldn't measure the data at the peering points but rather at the customers end, and thus introduce major point for potential abuse since the one sending cannot actually verify how much was delivered in total. If others do not "pay" for the total amount delivered to end-users then why should Netflix do it?

And as I said, anything transferred (and technically originated) within Verizon's network is payed for by Verizon's own customers. To make it more clear, Verizon's customers pay Verizon to maintain and upgrade Verizon's own network, and any "over sending" in peering agreements they have if needed. If they are not paying for that then what are they actually paying for?

You can make the argument that the ISP's choose to use said caches by them self and thus it's their choice to "multiply" that particular traffic, but that is equally valid to the Netflix caches. Considering that other ISP's seem to be perfectly fine with them then I can only conclude that it's pure greed that stops Verizon from accepting those caches, a.k.a they want (much) more money than it would cost to upgrade said peering points.

Since we are not privy to the agreement between Verizon and Cogent then we can't really say how much Cogent is to be blamed for this situation, but their place in all of this is completely irrelevant to Verizon's choice to use the Netflix caches or not.

Neither Netflix nor the users are to blame if data transmission happens to blow a hole in Verizon's little trick of overselling bandwidth, just like most other ISP do. This practice needs to dissapear.

You can't afford an Internet connection that isn't oversold in your home, and neither can 99.99% of consumers. Overselling isn't bad in and of itself, and this issue is actually unrelated.

As someone who pays for 50Mbps of down bandwidth, I expect to get 50Mbps of bandwidth from wherever the fuck I feel like it. It could be some place in Indonesia, I don't care. If they're feeding into the ISP's network--at any point the ISP has a connection--the ISP should forward it to me as fast as they can.

Back when I was in the ISP business, you're the type of customer I would very politely invite to switch to the services of our competitors.

An ISP can't deliver faster than the slowest link over the entire chain of transfer. If that link is a peering point with said ISP then that ISP has an obligation to "solve" it somehow. Still doesn't mean that you are going to get 50Mbps to any and every site on the 'net.

Quote:

Quote:

If they can't do 50Mbps, then why the fuck are they charging me for 50Mbps?

It's not everyone in the world's fault that you don't understand the technical nor economic details of modern internetworking.

For you to have as much bandwidth as you claim as a right, dozens of other customers would have to be paying for flat-rate connections that they barely use, just to offset your high level of consumption. Now, no service provider inherently wants to accurately log traffic volume and bill for it, and no customer wants a variable bill, so flat-rate unmetered (not unlimited, unmetered) is a sensible business convenience for all parties.

If I was currently in the MAN ("FTTH") business I'd want to give you a gigabit ethernet copper handoff for technical reasons. I'd prefer not to place any other consumption restrictions on your connection for technical and business reasons, which would mean you could potentially pass nearly gigabit aggregate volumes at some points. However, don't let that fool you into thinking you're receiving the same gigabit connection for which your provider or another business would need to pay mid five figures U.S., or more.

Legally speaking everyone should be able to get 50Mbps at the same time that has payed for it, otherwise I'm pretty sure it is false advertising. Now for practical (and economical) reasons they can't deliver that because they are counting on that X% won't be fully utilizing their connection, and since those who don't fully utilize it will hardly ever be inconvenienced by the ones who do (since the ones who do are really in the minority) it's not something that really gets "enforced".

And this is what I meant by you making the argument that "they should pay for the amount of data delivered to end-users, and not the amount going over peering points". I do not believe for one second that ISP's do not have any generic caches of any kind so by your argument then they shouldn't measure the data at the peering points but rather at the customers end, and thus introduce major point for potential abuse since the one sending cannot actually verify how much was delivered in total. If others do not "pay" for the total amount delivered to end-users then why should Netflix do it?

And as I said, anything transferred (and technically originated) within Verizon's network is payed for by Verizon's own customers. To make it more clear, Verizon's customers pay Verizon to maintain and upgrade Verizon's own network, and any "over sending" in peering agreements they have if needed. If they are not paying for that then what are they actually paying for?

You can make the argument that the ISP's choose to use said caches by them self and thus it's their choice to "multiply" that particular traffic, but that is equally valid to the Netflix caches. Considering that other ISP's seem to be perfectly fine with them then I can only conclude that it's pure greed that stops Verizon from accepting those caches, a.k.a they want (much) more money than it would cost to upgrade said peering points.

Since we are not privy to the agreement between Verizon and Cogent then we can't really say how much Cogent is to be blamed for this situation, but their place in all of this is completely irrelevant to Verizon's choice to use the Netflix caches or not.

You have hit the nail on the head. We had the same problem with a certain type of download in the 1990s. Rather than try to keep transferring the same data multiple times for each request from the origin, we created a local cache that was scrubbed daily and then replenished (fill cache ONE time daily and feed many customers from the cache and not the out-of-network origin).

Legally speaking everyone should be able to get 50Mbps at the same time that has payed for it, otherwise I'm pretty sure it is false advertising.

Legally speaking, the connection isn't advertised as 50Mbps. It's up to 50Mbps. I just went to Comcast's site, and the "Details" portion for one of their Internet packages plainly says "Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed."

Legally speaking everyone should be able to get 50Mbps at the same time that has payed for it, otherwise I'm pretty sure it is false advertising.

Legally speaking, the connection isn't advertised as 50Mbps. It's up to 50Mbps. I just went to Comcast's site, and the "Details" portion for one of their Internet packages plainly says "Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed."

Legally speaking everyone should be able to get 50Mbps at the same time that has payed for it, otherwise I'm pretty sure it is false advertising.

Legally speaking, the connection isn't advertised as 50Mbps. It's up to 50Mbps. I just went to Comcast's site, and the "Details" portion for one of their Internet packages plainly says "Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed."

Never let facts get in the way of a good rant.

The internet providers won't accept that sort of double-talk when dealing between themselves. They have clear standards about how they measure actual performance.

But a "consumer" can be sold "up to" some specified level -- and even if the customers are extraordinarily fortunate enough to ever see half (or even less) of the service level which they've supposedly paid for, that's supposed to be somehow OK, because of that weaselling little "up to" clause -- another sign that there's no meaningful competition in the consumer ISP market. Yet if those same customers go ahead and use that hobbled connection as fully as they are able, they're excoriated as "bandwidth abusers". Did I mention the lack of meaningful competition?

Now if "up to" X for Y $/month, meant that the customer could count on at least half of the advertised X mb/sec. all the time, and (for the sake of the argument) over 80% of X at least 80% of the time (you could call this an 80/80 plan), this could be argued to be a reasonable fulfilment of the contract. In that case, it would be reasonable to dismiss the complainers with the response that they were only promised an "up to X mb/sec.", consumer class service -- if that's not good enough, they need a "real" business-class connection.

But arguing that it's acceptable to offer an "up to X" service, that really provides X/2 (let's call it 30/90 service) is disingenuous. If there was an actual competitive market, the provider would go out of business. In situations where such a competitive market does not obtain (and often even where it does) the normal course is to implement effective consumer standards legislation. Arguably, the absence of such legislation is more evidence of regulatory capture.

Please, let's stop trotting out this pathetic fact excuse as if it had any merit.

Please, let's stop trotting out this pathetic fact excuse as if it had any merit.

Nobody's excusing anything. blacke implied that ISPs are breaking the law by not having enough bandwidth to support every customer getting their advertised speed if they all try to use 100% of their connection at the same time. I corrected him.

However, once again, consumer Internet connections simply cannot work in the way you want them to. When ISPs connect with each other, they have a single (or a few) direct connections at each point. If they're each using 10 gigabit ports, then they have a 10 gigabit connection. It's simple. But consumer Internet connections are on a shared medium. A 500-home HFC cable node simply cannot support every customer downloading 50Mbps at the same time, no matter how much you'd like it to be the case. The nodes can split up and made smaller, but that entails a bunch of new equipment and new fiber.

And that's just at the neighborhood level. How in God's name is a consumer ISP supposed support dedicated bandwidth for even a single city? Let's assume 20,000 customers in a city, each with a 50Mbps downstream connection. That means the ISP has to have one terabit of bandwidth available for a single city, which will be 99% idle. Are you starting to see why it's simply not feasible?

Please, let's stop trotting out this pathetic fact excuse as if it had any merit.

Nobody's excusing anything. blacke implied that ISPs are breaking the law by not having enough bandwidth to support every customer getting their advertised speed if they all try to use 100% of their connection at the same time. I corrected him.

However, once again, consumer Internet connections simply cannot work in the way you want them to. When ISPs connect with each other, they have a single (or a few) direct connections at each point. If they're each using 10 gigabit ports, then they have a 10 gigabit connection. It's simple. But consumer Internet connections are on a shared medium. A 500-home HFC cable node simply cannot support every customer downloading 50Mbps at the same time, no matter how much you'd like it to be the case. The nodes can split up and made smaller, but that entails a bunch of new equipment and new fiber.

And that's just at the neighborhood level. How in God's name is a consumer ISP supposed support dedicated bandwidth for even a single city? Let's assume 20,000 customers in a city, each with a 50Mbps downstream connection. That means the ISP has to have one terabit of bandwidth available for a single city, which will be 99% idle. Are you starting to see why it's simply not feasible?

No, I am not seeing why it is not feasible. What I am seeing is a claim that delivering half a loaf (or less) is "good enough". Would you accept that rationale at the bakery? The meat market? Or canned goods? If so, why? If not, why not?

DSL does, in fact, generally supply full bandwidth to each individual end user all the time. Any problems tend to be outside the network (i.e. originating server heavily loaded, for example). So the problem is not if reasonably full bandwidth can be provided to each and every customer. The customer doesn't give a crap about anything except his/her own download. They only know one thing: The stuff they want to see/do is not being delivered by their ISP as agreed.

Terabit speeds are not a big deal today. There is a ~2tb fiber line now serving portions of the west coast of Afica. I have a suspicion higher data speeds could be obtained within the US--don't you agree?

So the question is not if things are going to change. It is merely a matter of when. It requires significant investment, but that is the definition of an ISP. Big upfront costs and periodic cost bumps to upgrade the network. Either Verizon ponies up the money to fix their distribution problem (which is the real issue) or Verizon faces losing the business--market after market, as customers find suitable alternatives to Verizon. Comcast faces the same problem.

I confess I haven't read the 10 pages of comments, so this may have been discussed over and over already, so please ignore if so.

I just don't understand the whole argument by Verizon and Comcast. If they sell you a package that allows you to use 250GB of bandwidth a month, why should it be any of their business whether you download 250GB of bowling videos, stream a lot of Pornhub, or - horror of horrors - watch a lot of Netflix? If you're consuming within the bandwidth limits THAT THEY SET, why should it matter what the data is comprised of?

Also, surely the popularity of Netflix has actually caused many people to actually pay more for a larger bandwidth cap - the service actually drives people to buy more expensive packages. I know my parents are spending a lot more on their internet since they discovered Netflix. (I know, brilliant sample size...)

Please, let's stop trotting out this pathetic fact excuse as if it had any merit.

Nobody's excusing anything. blacke implied that ISPs are breaking the law by not having enough bandwidth to support every customer getting their advertised speed if they all try to use 100% of their connection at the same time. I corrected him.

However, once again, consumer Internet connections simply cannot work in the way you want them to. When ISPs connect with each other, they have a single (or a few) direct connections at each point. If they're each using 10 gigabit ports, then they have a 10 gigabit connection. It's simple. But consumer Internet connections are on a shared medium. A 500-home HFC cable node simply cannot support every customer downloading 50Mbps at the same time, no matter how much you'd like it to be the case. The nodes can split up and made smaller, but that entails a bunch of new equipment and new fiber.

And that's just at the neighborhood level. How in God's name is a consumer ISP supposed support dedicated bandwidth for even a single city? Let's assume 20,000 customers in a city, each with a 50Mbps downstream connection. That means the ISP has to have one terabit of bandwidth available for a single city, which will be 99% idle. Are you starting to see why it's simply not feasible?

No, I am not seeing why it is not feasible. What I am seeing is a claim that delivering half a loaf (or less) is "good enough". Would you accept that rationale at the bakery? The meat market? Or canned goods? If so, why? If not, why not?

DSL does, in fact, generally supply full bandwidth to each individual end user all the time. Any problems tend to be outside the network (i.e. originating server heavily loaded, for example). So the problem is not if reasonably full bandwidth can be provided to each and every customer. The customer doesn't give a crap about anything except his/her own download. They only know one thing: The stuff they want to see/do is not being delivered by their ISP as agreed.

Terabit speeds are not a big deal today. There is a ~2tb fiber line now serving portions of the west coast of Afica. I have a suspicion higher data speeds could be obtained within the US--don't you agree?

So the question is not if things are going to change. It is merely a matter of when. It requires significant investment, but that is the definition of an ISP. Big upfront costs and periodic cost bumps to upgrade the network. Either Verizon ponies up the money to fix their distribution problem (which is the real issue) or Verizon faces losing the business--market after market, as customers find suitable alternatives to Verizon. Comcast faces the same problem.

DSL supplies full bandwidth all the time? That's what the telcos want users to believe but it's only partially correct. Because the Internet is not a "connection-oriented" network, it is an inherently shared mechanism. Your "dedicated" connection is only so until it hits the DSLAM. From that point on, your connection is no longer dedicated; it is shared just like any cable service, meaning it is not guaranteed.

Please, let's stop trotting out this pathetic fact excuse as if it had any merit.

Nobody's excusing anything. blacke implied that ISPs are breaking the law by not having enough bandwidth to support every customer getting their advertised speed if they all try to use 100% of their connection at the same time. I corrected him.

However, once again, consumer Internet connections simply cannot work in the way you want them to. When ISPs connect with each other, they have a single (or a few) direct connections at each point. If they're each using 10 gigabit ports, then they have a 10 gigabit connection. It's simple. But consumer Internet connections are on a shared medium. A 500-home HFC cable node simply cannot support every customer downloading 50Mbps at the same time, no matter how much you'd like it to be the case. The nodes can split up and made smaller, but that entails a bunch of new equipment and new fiber.

And that's just at the neighborhood level. How in God's name is a consumer ISP supposed support dedicated bandwidth for even a single city? Let's assume 20,000 customers in a city, each with a 50Mbps downstream connection. That means the ISP has to have one terabit of bandwidth available for a single city, which will be 99% idle. Are you starting to see why it's simply not feasible?

No, I am not seeing why it is not feasible. What I am seeing is a claim that delivering half a loaf (or less) is "good enough". Would you accept that rationale at the bakery? The meat market? Or canned goods? If so, why? If not, why not?

DSL does, in fact, generally supply full bandwidth to each individual end user all the time. Any problems tend to be outside the network (i.e. originating server heavily loaded, for example). So the problem is not if reasonably full bandwidth can be provided to each and every customer. The customer doesn't give a crap about anything except his/her own download. They only know one thing: The stuff they want to see/do is not being delivered by their ISP as agreed.

Terabit speeds are not a big deal today. There is a ~2tb fiber line now serving portions of the west coast of Afica. I have a suspicion higher data speeds could be obtained within the US--don't you agree?

So the question is not if things are going to change. It is merely a matter of when. It requires significant investment, but that is the definition of an ISP. Big upfront costs and periodic cost bumps to upgrade the network. Either Verizon ponies up the money to fix their distribution problem (which is the real issue) or Verizon faces losing the business--market after market, as customers find suitable alternatives to Verizon. Comcast faces the same problem.

DSL supplies full bandwidth all the time? That's what the telcos want users to believe but it's only partially correct. Because the Internet is not a "connection-oriented" network, it is an inherently shared mechanism. Your "dedicated" connection is only so until it hits the DSLAM. From that point on, your connection is no longer dedicated; it is shared just like any cable service, meaning it is not guaranteed.

If the DSLAM is constantly overloaded, then it is the responsibility of the telco to remove the inadequate equipment and replace it with different equipment that does reasonably meet promised/ contracted delivery volumes. I do not care about "the rest of the Internet". Neither does anyone else. My primary deal is with my ISP. If the claim of "sharing" was valid, then the upload/download speed restrictions would not apply. Everyone would be on unlimited upload AND download speeds--with every bit metered and paid for by the customer to the local ISP. The ISP would not care--because they were being paid for every single bit being sent OR received. So "more = better" for the ISP. And they get more by having the fastest possible speeds. Sharing? No way. It is all about squeezing out the maximum profit with the minimum investment.

Correct, Verizon and Cogent should figure it out. Just like Verizon needs to figure it out with almost every other provider they work with. They are consistently the source of these problems because their business model is entirely dependent on using peering agreements in a non-even way, which is how they were intended.

FTFY. Cogent is an internet company doing internet business like hashing out peering and transit agreements just as it's always been done. Has it ever dawned on you to look at it from the other side, and recognize that it's Verizon and the other last-mile ISPs-turned-content-conglomerates who are breaking things like peering by being unreasonably asymmetrical with their bandwidth plans and their puny upload limits, and trying to "break the internet" by leveraging this captive audience in order to force both senders and receivers of data to pay in as many ways as possible for the same data?

As for Netflix offering to provide Verizon and other big ISPs with caching servers--again, if you look at it from the other side this is Netflix trying to provide a win-win solution for both parties, since Verizon wouldn't have to pay as much to upgrade its connectivity and equipment to handle increased requests by its customers for Cogent-originating data (which it would have to do under the traditional standards which internet companies have always used) while Netflix customers would get the same faster response from Netflix as if Verizon had. In that reading, Netflix is actually being downright generous (albeit for reasons of mutual benefit) to Verizon. It's Verizon's refusal to upgrade its connectivity with Cogent, in accordance with long-agreed-upon internet standards of business conduct, which is the only real problem here.

If you read what you "fixed," you would have read that Cogent is the company who can't get along with anyone else. So the question, again, is who is at fault, the company who has issues with everyone else, or everyone else? Netflix isn't trying to provide a win-win, they are trying to get a situation where they can continue to use Cogent, who undercuts competition through these peering abuses, without any increases in their costs.

Netflix is being generous by refusing to use a provider who can handle their traffic and then wanting to host their equipment on a different network without compensating them in any way? Please.

Nifty contradiction, so let them do it your way. Netflix is in business to make a profit--as is Verizon. Netflix requires Verizon to provide a pipe appropriate to meet Verizon's customers' needs connected directly to Verizon's network. Netflix pays for that volume--up to the pipe limit AND Verizon has to unconditionally guarantee their customers will buy the full capacity of that pipe. Now the shoe is on Verizon's foot. They will not do it. Why should Netflix pay for excess capacity they will not use? The problem is with Verizon because they refuse to commit to their customers' needs.

This is incorrect. I'll make it as simple as possible. Netflix uses Cogent, who has "50" capacity into Verizon's network. Netflix wants to send "100." Instead of properly increasing their "50" to "100" Cogent wants Verizon to just open it up themselves.

All this is moot, however, since the exact same situation Verizon is having with Netflix was just resolved between Netflix and Comcast by...get this...Netflix paying money to Comcast. The solution Netflix found is what I have been saying should have been happening.

Please, let's stop trotting out this pathetic fact excuse as if it had any merit.

Nobody's excusing anything. blacke implied that ISPs are breaking the law by not having enough bandwidth to support every customer getting their advertised speed if they all try to use 100% of their connection at the same time. I corrected him.

However, once again, consumer Internet connections simply cannot work in the way you want them to. When ISPs connect with each other, they have a single (or a few) direct connections at each point. If they're each using 10 gigabit ports, then they have a 10 gigabit connection. It's simple. But consumer Internet connections are on a shared medium. A 500-home HFC cable node simply cannot support every customer downloading 50Mbps at the same time, no matter how much you'd like it to be the case. The nodes can split up and made smaller, but that entails a bunch of new equipment and new fiber.

And that's just at the neighborhood level. How in God's name is a consumer ISP supposed support dedicated bandwidth for even a single city? Let's assume 20,000 customers in a city, each with a 50Mbps downstream connection. That means the ISP has to have one terabit of bandwidth available for a single city, which will be 99% idle. Are you starting to see why it's simply not feasible?

No, I am not seeing why it is not feasible. What I am seeing is a claim that delivering half a loaf (or less) is "good enough". Would you accept that rationale at the bakery? The meat market? Or canned goods? If so, why? If not, why not?

DSL does, in fact, generally supply full bandwidth to each individual end user all the time. Any problems tend to be outside the network (i.e. originating server heavily loaded, for example). So the problem is not if reasonably full bandwidth can be provided to each and every customer. The customer doesn't give a crap about anything except his/her own download. They only know one thing: The stuff they want to see/do is not being delivered by their ISP as agreed.

Terabit speeds are not a big deal today. There is a ~2tb fiber line now serving portions of the west coast of Afica. I have a suspicion higher data speeds could be obtained within the US--don't you agree?

So the question is not if things are going to change. It is merely a matter of when. It requires significant investment, but that is the definition of an ISP. Big upfront costs and periodic cost bumps to upgrade the network. Either Verizon ponies up the money to fix their distribution problem (which is the real issue) or Verizon faces losing the business--market after market, as customers find suitable alternatives to Verizon. Comcast faces the same problem.

DSL supplies full bandwidth all the time? That's what the telcos want users to believe but it's only partially correct. Because the Internet is not a "connection-oriented" network, it is an inherently shared mechanism. Your "dedicated" connection is only so until it hits the DSLAM. From that point on, your connection is no longer dedicated; it is shared just like any cable service, meaning it is not guaranteed.

If the DSLAM is constantly overloaded, then it is the responsibility of the telco to remove the inadequate equipment and replace it with different equipment that does reasonably meet promised/ contracted delivery volumes. I do not care about "the rest of the Internet". Neither does anyone else. My primary deal is with my ISP. If the claim of "sharing" was valid, then the upload/download speed restrictions would not apply. Everyone would be on unlimited upload AND download speeds--with every bit metered and paid for by the customer to the local ISP. The ISP would not care--because they were being paid for every single bit being sent OR received. So "more = better" for the ISP. And they get more by having the fastest possible speeds. Sharing? No way. It is all about squeezing out the maximum profit with the minimum investment.

I didn't say it was overloaded. I said the link from the DSLAM to the rest of the Internet is shared, and it is.

No, I am not seeing why it is not feasible. What I am seeing is a claim that delivering half a loaf (or less) is "good enough". Would you accept that rationale at the bakery? The meat market? Or canned goods? If so, why? If not, why not?

Those comparisons simply aren't valid. Buying a certain amount of a physical product is not even in the same universe as a consumer-level Internet connection.

Please, let's stop trotting out this pathetic fact excuse as if it had any merit.

Nobody's excusing anything. blacke implied that ISPs are breaking the law by not having enough bandwidth to support every customer getting their advertised speed if they all try to use 100% of their connection at the same time. I corrected him.

However, once again, consumer Internet connections simply cannot work in the way you want them to. When ISPs connect with each other, they have a single (or a few) direct connections at each point. If they're each using 10 gigabit ports, then they have a 10 gigabit connection. It's simple. But consumer Internet connections are on a shared medium. A 500-home HFC cable node simply cannot support every customer downloading 50Mbps at the same time, no matter how much you'd like it to be the case. The nodes can split up and made smaller, but that entails a bunch of new equipment and new fiber.

And that's just at the neighborhood level. How in God's name is a consumer ISP supposed support dedicated bandwidth for even a single city? Let's assume 20,000 customers in a city, each with a 50Mbps downstream connection. That means the ISP has to have one terabit of bandwidth available for a single city, which will be 99% idle. Are you starting to see why it's simply not feasible?

No, I am not seeing why it is not feasible. What I am seeing is a claim that delivering half a loaf (or less) is "good enough". Would you accept that rationale at the bakery? The meat market? Or canned goods? If so, why? If not, why not?

DSL does, in fact, generally supply full bandwidth to each individual end user all the time. Any problems tend to be outside the network (i.e. originating server heavily loaded, for example). So the problem is not if reasonably full bandwidth can be provided to each and every customer. The customer doesn't give a crap about anything except his/her own download. They only know one thing: The stuff they want to see/do is not being delivered by their ISP as agreed.

Terabit speeds are not a big deal today. There is a ~2tb fiber line now serving portions of the west coast of Afica. I have a suspicion higher data speeds could be obtained within the US--don't you agree?

So the question is not if things are going to change. It is merely a matter of when. It requires significant investment, but that is the definition of an ISP. Big upfront costs and periodic cost bumps to upgrade the network. Either Verizon ponies up the money to fix their distribution problem (which is the real issue) or Verizon faces losing the business--market after market, as customers find suitable alternatives to Verizon. Comcast faces the same problem.

DSL has the same limitations ... if everyone in the city decided to download content from an out of town site (each different) then they would overload the ISP's backhaul. Even if they all decided to trade info completely within the ISP's network, they can exceed the capacity of the ISP's servers.

A similar effect is seen in regional disasters which is why people are asked to NOT use the phone. When too many people try to use their unlimited phone service at the same time, they get a "trunk line unavailable" or "busy signal" error until a circuit is freed. I have actually heard the "trunk line unavailable" message when trying to use my "always on, always available" phone service...it is not theoretical. Phone lines have been oversold since before 1900 and rely on enough phones being unused at any given time for the main phone circuits to be able to handle the remaining load.

The same model was extended to dial-up, and to all other data connections that are not subject to a contract with a guaranteed minimum service level. For those who wish to never have their service degraded, there are guaranteed service level contracts available. They are more expensive as the cost of the backhaul is not shared with other customers.

Correct, Verizon and Cogent should figure it out. Just like Verizon needs to figure it out with almost every other provider they work with. They are consistently the source of these problems because their business model is entirely dependent on using peering agreements in a non-even way, which is how they were intended.

FTFY. Cogent is an internet company doing internet business like hashing out peering and transit agreements just as it's always been done. Has it ever dawned on you to look at it from the other side, and recognize that it's Verizon and the other last-mile ISPs-turned-content-conglomerates who are breaking things like peering by being unreasonably asymmetrical with their bandwidth plans and their puny upload limits, and trying to "break the internet" by leveraging this captive audience in order to force both senders and receivers of data to pay in as many ways as possible for the same data?

As for Netflix offering to provide Verizon and other big ISPs with caching servers--again, if you look at it from the other side this is Netflix trying to provide a win-win solution for both parties, since Verizon wouldn't have to pay as much to upgrade its connectivity and equipment to handle increased requests by its customers for Cogent-originating data (which it would have to do under the traditional standards which internet companies have always used) while Netflix customers would get the same faster response from Netflix as if Verizon had. In that reading, Netflix is actually being downright generous (albeit for reasons of mutual benefit) to Verizon. It's Verizon's refusal to upgrade its connectivity with Cogent, in accordance with long-agreed-upon internet standards of business conduct, which is the only real problem here.

If you read what you "fixed," you would have read that Cogent is the company who can't get along with anyone else. So the question, again, is who is at fault, the company who has issues with everyone else, or everyone else? Netflix isn't trying to provide a win-win, they are trying to get a situation where they can continue to use Cogent, who undercuts competition through these peering abuses, without any increases in their costs.

Netflix is being generous by refusing to use a provider who can handle their traffic and then wanting to host their equipment on a different network without compensating them in any way? Please.

Nifty contradiction, so let them do it your way. Netflix is in business to make a profit--as is Verizon. Netflix requires Verizon to provide a pipe appropriate to meet Verizon's customers' needs connected directly to Verizon's network. Netflix pays for that volume--up to the pipe limit AND Verizon has to unconditionally guarantee their customers will buy the full capacity of that pipe. Now the shoe is on Verizon's foot. They will not do it. Why should Netflix pay for excess capacity they will not use? The problem is with Verizon because they refuse to commit to their customers' needs.

This is incorrect. I'll make it as simple as possible. Netflix uses Cogent, who has "50" capacity into Verizon's network. Netflix wants to send "100." Instead of properly increasing their "50" to "100" Cogent wants Verizon to just open it up themselves.

All this is moot, however, since the exact same situation Verizon is having with Netflix was just resolved between Netflix and Comcast by...get this...Netflix paying money to Comcast. The solution Netflix found is what I have been saying should have been happening.

Verizon's customers want to receive 100. By allowing the cache, Verizon's capacity of 50 would be hit with a demand of 1 and Verizon's customers would receive 100

The news is that NetFlix and Comcast have settled and that the contract is NOT available for public review. Among the details released is that caching servers are installed and that they will be hosted at a 3rd party (unnamed) site. Another item that you overlook is that Comcast and NetFlix are "peering partners" under the new contract. Simply put NetFlix is a subscriber to Comcast service and transfers from NetFlix (a Comcast customer) to other Comcast customers are now handled entirely by Comcast. This eliminated all bottlenecks associated with Comcast/Major_ISP peering agreements.

While there are differences in implementation, what Comcast settled for is what Verizon is refusing. Sign an agreement that would have the NetFlix data delivered without going through a peering partner.

What is unknown is whether the Comcast contract includes transit or limits NetFlix traffic on this new direct peering connection to Comcast with no out of network traffic permitted. That detail also makes a difference. The second is what NetFlix is offering to Verizon.

The problem is not over-subscription, per se. Nor that consumers don't always get the advertized maximum speed. The problem is that what they do get, falls so consistently and so shamelessly short of what was advertized as credibly possible.

No, I am not seeing why it is not feasible. What I am seeing is a claim that delivering half a loaf (or less) is "good enough". Would you accept that rationale at the bakery? The meat market? Or canned goods? If so, why? If not, why not?

Those comparisons simply aren't valid. Buying a certain amount of a physical product is not even in the same universe as a consumer-level Internet connection.

It's more like the electricity supply ... Everyone turns on the A/C and the power plant shuts down to avoid destroying the equipment. Everyone knows they can draw power until their local circuit breaker pops. What they do not realize is that the grid and the generators cannot handle that great a load. The power grid was designed with the understanding that having everyone decide to use a large percentage of their electricity allocation at the same time would never happen. Every year you hear about utilities across the country complaining about A/C usage ... this is why they complain.http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... -melbournehttp://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/mconn ... ackou.htmlhttp://www.thestate.com/2014/01/07/3194 ... emand.htmlThat is just a sampling. You are guaranteed electricity up to the capacity of your connection to the pole ... until everyone tries to use it at the same time

No, I am not seeing why it is not feasible. What I am seeing is a claim that delivering half a loaf (or less) is "good enough". Would you accept that rationale at the bakery? The meat market? Or canned goods? If so, why? If not, why not?

Those comparisons simply aren't valid. Buying a certain amount of a physical product is not even in the same universe as a consumer-level Internet connection.

It's more like the electricity supply ... Everyone turns on the A/C and the power plant shuts down to avoid destroying the equipment. Everyone knows they can draw power until their local circuit breaker pops. What they do not realize is that the grid and the generators cannot handle that great a load. The power grid was designed with the understanding that having everyone decide to use a large percentage of their electricity allocation at the same time would never happen. Every year you hear about utilities across the country complaining about A/C usage ... this is why they complain.http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... -melbournehttp://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/mconn ... ackou.htmlhttp://www.thestate.com/2014/01/07/3194 ... emand.htmlThat is just a sampling. You are guaranteed electricity up to the capacity of your connection to the pole ... until everyone tries to use it at the same time

Except that it isn't that the capacity doesn't exist. It's been, what, a few weeks since the courts made their NN ruling? So, before three weeks ago people using Netflix had no capacity issues, but now suddenly they do, and it is entirely because Verizon is intentionally throttling their connections. To use your metaphor, it would be like power companies intentionally charging ten times their normal rate during a heat wave knowing that people want to run their A/Cs. Which would generally get them sued.

No, I am not seeing why it is not feasible. What I am seeing is a claim that delivering half a loaf (or less) is "good enough". Would you accept that rationale at the bakery? The meat market? Or canned goods? If so, why? If not, why not?

Those comparisons simply aren't valid. Buying a certain amount of a physical product is not even in the same universe as a consumer-level Internet connection.

It's more like the electricity supply ... Everyone turns on the A/C and the power plant shuts down to avoid destroying the equipment. Everyone knows they can draw power until their local circuit breaker pops. What they do not realize is that the grid and the generators cannot handle that great a load. The power grid was designed with the understanding that having everyone decide to use a large percentage of their electricity allocation at the same time would never happen. Every year you hear about utilities across the country complaining about A/C usage ... this is why they complain.http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... -melbournehttp://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/mconn ... ackou.htmlhttp://www.thestate.com/2014/01/07/3194 ... emand.htmlThat is just a sampling. You are guaranteed electricity up to the capacity of your connection to the pole ... until everyone tries to use it at the same time

Except that it isn't that the capacity doesn't exist. It's been, what, a few weeks since the courts made their NN ruling? So, before three weeks ago people using Netflix had no capacity issues, but now suddenly they do, and it is entirely because Verizon is intentionally throttling their connections. To use your metaphor, it would be like power companies intentionally charging ten times their normal rate during a heat wave knowing that people want to run their A/Cs. Which would generally get them sued.

Apparently Verizon disagrees with you since they are claiming it is a capacity issue at the 3rd party peering connection. They are also refusing the offer to take that problematic peer out of the connection.

No, I am not seeing why it is not feasible. What I am seeing is a claim that delivering half a loaf (or less) is "good enough". Would you accept that rationale at the bakery? The meat market? Or canned goods? If so, why? If not, why not?

Those comparisons simply aren't valid. Buying a certain amount of a physical product is not even in the same universe as a consumer-level Internet connection.

It's more like the electricity supply ... Everyone turns on the A/C and the power plant shuts down to avoid destroying the equipment. Everyone knows they can draw power until their local circuit breaker pops. What they do not realize is that the grid and the generators cannot handle that great a load. The power grid was designed with the understanding that having everyone decide to use a large percentage of their electricity allocation at the same time would never happen. Every year you hear about utilities across the country complaining about A/C usage ... this is why they complain.http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... -melbournehttp://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/mconn ... ackou.htmlhttp://www.thestate.com/2014/01/07/3194 ... emand.htmlThat is just a sampling. You are guaranteed electricity up to the capacity of your connection to the pole ... until everyone tries to use it at the same time

Except that it isn't that the capacity doesn't exist. It's been, what, a few weeks since the courts made their NN ruling? So, before three weeks ago people using Netflix had no capacity issues, but now suddenly they do, and it is entirely because Verizon is intentionally throttling their connections. To use your metaphor, it would be like power companies intentionally charging ten times their normal rate during a heat wave knowing that people want to run their A/Cs. Which would generally get them sued.

And that's been known to happen too, with power companies deliberately manipulating the electrical power availability and supply, on quite the large scale, to artificially and arbitrarily raise the price of electric power.

To solve the issue and save itself from cancelations by Comcast-subscribers, Netflix has ponied up the funds to cut out the middlemen, avoid the choke-points where data was getting throttled, and build a pipe to Comcast directly. A big pipe, just for Netflix. So instead of a harder-fought and probably long-delayed solution that could have resulted bigger, better, public pipes for the internet at large to flow through, we get a quick solution—but also a new precedent for how to handle massive amounts of data and whose responsibility it is to pay for it.

Under this new deal, Netflix will access Comcast's network directly—or, almost directly, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news this afternoon. "Under the deal, Netflix won't be able to place its servers inside Comcast's data centers, which Netflix had wanted," the paper explains. "Instead, Comcast will connect to Netflix's servers at data centers operated by other companies."

I saw the comment originally on a Yahoo! News linked story. Can't find that story now, but Gizmodo is the second mention of "other companies" data centers that I have seen now.

No, I am not seeing why it is not feasible. What I am seeing is a claim that delivering half a loaf (or less) is "good enough". Would you accept that rationale at the bakery? The meat market? Or canned goods? If so, why? If not, why not?

Those comparisons simply aren't valid. Buying a certain amount of a physical product is not even in the same universe as a consumer-level Internet connection.

It's more like the electricity supply ... Everyone turns on the A/C and the power plant shuts down to avoid destroying the equipment. Everyone knows they can draw power until their local circuit breaker pops. What they do not realize is that the grid and the generators cannot handle that great a load. The power grid was designed with the understanding that having everyone decide to use a large percentage of their electricity allocation at the same time would never happen. Every year you hear about utilities across the country complaining about A/C usage ... this is why they complain.http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... -melbournehttp://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/mconn ... ackou.htmlhttp://www.thestate.com/2014/01/07/3194 ... emand.htmlThat is just a sampling. You are guaranteed electricity up to the capacity of your connection to the pole ... until everyone tries to use it at the same time

Except that it isn't that the capacity doesn't exist. It's been, what, a few weeks since the courts made their NN ruling? So, before three weeks ago people using Netflix had no capacity issues, but now suddenly they do, and it is entirely because Verizon is intentionally throttling their connections. To use your metaphor, it would be like power companies intentionally charging ten times their normal rate during a heat wave knowing that people want to run their A/Cs. Which would generally get them sued.

And that's been known to happen too, with power companies deliberately manipulating the electrical power availability and supply, on quite the large scale, to artificially and arbitrarily raise the price of electric power.

Right, but most of the time they don't because it's illegal. It's a large part of why Enron went down.